MovieChat Forums > Begin Again (2014) Discussion > who really did the songs?

who really did the songs?


is it a real group? we they all done by that same group? is somebody we already know or a new startup breaking out?

i don't recall any mention of the actual musicians behind this, but it was all pretty good.

anyone know anything?


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Look at the soundtrack listing. Keira Knightly did her own singing in the film. Songs were written by Glen Hansard from "Once", Danielle Brisbois, former child actor, among others.

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Several of the songs were written by Gregg Alexander, of New Radicals. In fact, the bridge of "No One Else Like You" bears some resemblance to "You Get What You Give", which was the New Radicals only hit song. One of the best one-hit wonders, imho.

Screws fall out all of the time. The world's an imperfect place.

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Well New Radicals had the one hit record which allowed the main guy to do what he really wanted to do. Go into writing and producing songs.


It's that man again!!

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If Kiera really sang the songs I'm sure they're auto tuned. It doesn't sound anything like her real voice.

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Agree with lobo. Funny that the point of the movie was to have them recording live and raw, but her voice is so processed it sounds fake.

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you do realise that auto tune just alters the pitch (high, low frequency) of your voice to make it hit the correct note, not the character of your voice. Keira's a actor, and accents, delivery, tone, are what she does. Her delivery was part of that, whether it was in tune and solidly stable we'll never know unless we hear the raw takes but it's highly likely she was decent enough at controlling her voice to deliver what we hear. The fake bit is the production, echoes, reverbs, the clarity and cleanness of a purpose built studio, the layers of vocals built up to make a full vocals sound, the harmonies and double tracked vocals that give it width. No, he didn't do that on a roof top, there's only one of her, and there was no guy playing the tambourine either yet you can clearly hear it in the song. That's the fake bit, making the song sound it's studio produced best while played on a roof top or alley way. I didn't mind it that much. the songs were fantastic.

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You're correct...but then again, the 'pitch' of one's voice, is really the definition of whether one has a good singing voice, or not. You can hit notes....or you cannot.

If you're arguing auto-tune doesn't "improve" or significantly alter one's singing voice, then you have never heard Britney Spears or Kane West, without auto-tune.




Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

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It definitely improves your tuning but a 'good' singing voice, ie something that makes it special, is in the character of the delivery, the emotion conveyed. Certainly it's much better if you can do that AND hit the notes and have good range, but the tuning of it is less important to an exciting interesting voice than the singers ability to convey feeling. You can have perfect pitch and be dull as dish water. They put a bit of effort into getting a 'sweet' sound out of Kiera, and succeeding.

I've no idea if they used autotune on her voice as if it was used it's used so transparently as to not be able to hear it. ie they didn't use it like in a cher processed way. But seeing as how most studios use it to lock everything in tight pitch wise I'm sure her tracks were 'perfected'. No shame or harm in that. It's just a tool for musicians to make things faster.

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Good points, all true...




Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?

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just listening to Keira's lost stars version and there is audible auto tune on it. At 1.47 on the word 'careful' it glitches. they should have been more careful.

also of note the vocal coach got Keira to sing in an America accent which is quite common with pop music recordings. The Beatles did it etc but it would have been truer to the the integrity of the character with all her anti image ethics to have done it in a British accent, plus I would have liked to have heard her UK singing voice.

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I would have liked to have heard her UK singing voice

You can:
https://youtu.be/1V5o8UEPc7I
https://youtu.be/PNMywIPzJvw
https://youtu.be/rmvYD8r9b8I

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cheers for that. Really nice tone. would have worked just as well on the Begin Again songs.

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Auto-tune is more of an effect than an "auto tune". Her voice did not have the auto-tune effect on it at all, not in the entire film.

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Autotune is a plugin that tunes pitch issues, AND can be manipulated to give that weird cher effect. It was designed to tune pitch issues though, which it does quite well depending on the skill of the user. if the performance is too shaky and the engineer using the plugin is of average skill you start to hear artifacts of the process. a weirdness to the sound. if it's pushed you get the mechanical voice characteristics of that cher song.
You can hear sections of the song which sound a little bit processed in place though, with headphones on. No massive shame in that though. It's used on practically everyone because it is really difficult to sing in perfect tune as we're often required to by todays standards. The trick in performance is to convey an emotive feel and she did that really well.

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Danielle Brisbois and Gregg Alexander have worked together for a long time.

See my published polls here: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls063373675

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I didn't have that much of a problem with it. Yes, it did sound polished, especially since the idea was that they were supposed to be recording "out in the wild." But, in the moment, it felt fine.

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